flicker-download/02

Somewhere above the waste the sun beats futilely on the wall of
toxins with clenched fists. Down below the sky changes color
slightly, reflected flame changing albedo with the backlight clouds.
Fortieth street is behind me as I flow uptown. There are no crowds
gathered; no cars rush, and the street is quiet. In the middle of the
intersection of Forty-second and Madison, a Cop sits silently with
its signals hanging loose and forlorn. I hear voices. The fear
returns.

Motion ceases instantly, the world freezing in around me as a
squirrel's, long time since I saw one but I remember the inquisitive
fearful pop motion as it played across a singed sward in the park.
The avenue caresses me as I lie across a manhole, and flicker it
through myself. Four of them round the corner, empty-faced. One
carries food; the odor is strong through the paper sack he holds and
the other three surround him, reduced to bodyguards of their
sustenance. Power surges beneath, the shock is strong and the
surprise no less as City's muscles flex beneath my gut. The manhole
quivers, and I feel the flicker betrayed as eyes swing to my frozen
form. I gaze back from behind a web of optic lies, protected
thankfully from the full locking of our stares. Point man motions the
others, who stop; he advances slowly, displaying the short sword he
bears. I do not move. Staring at him, I feel mode wanting it, and
feel the calculations start. Wondering, as usual, how they were
emplaced within me, I rise from the ground as Mode breaks and kill
him, emptying his brainpan onto the cold concrete. I suppress flicker
with an effort of will and dash the optic blindfold from my face,
chromatics running down my cheeks as rain. The others stare, and
flee; Mode moves to chase and I beat it down. I sit, and the blood
washes from me in a sudden hot downpour from the sky. I raise my eyes
to it, wishing for the pain, but there is none. I cannot hurt. I
cannot die. I cannot heal.

On Fiftieth street I meet another, seeing only the delay of his
Shell, watching as the image of the drunken lamppost
flickers infinitismally with the movement of my head. I nod, and
wash the flicker; an answering ripple of not-quite-color delineates a
manshape before me. We drop back to crawl and slide away from each
other in the City's dance. Fifty-seventh street calls to me from the
West, its broken vista opening before me as I scurry across. A wall
of flame rises at Broadway, barricades packed with steel, stone,
flesh and flame. From behind, the wink of proscription; the gun
flashes, a distant cousin of the flicker, causing the pavement near
me to dimple with the flat spang of impact. The blands wait,
watching as I dart sideways. They rule there. Behind the wall,
sounds, confusion; I feel Mode locking down and turn my head so as to
see them while immobilized. As Mode takes me down into the gutter,
fetid water flowing past my collarbone, I see a bland crest the
barricade with gun in hand. He looks towards me. Not at me; Mode
won't let him. The gun is held at the ready, both his hands wrapped
around it in a prayer for the dead that lie beyond his wall. I feel
Mode wanting him. I feel flicker dissecting him. I do not move; Mode
has not broken.

He clambers down the slope of debris expertly, sliding across
without injury. Another rises into view behind him. I hear City's
frustration. Beyond the wall, City lies exposed, its Shell broken and
its guts torn up. The subway doesn't run there anymore.

His gun quivers, betraying tension. I watch the muscles of his
wrists stand out in fear and excitement, unknowing of the closeness
of his death. Mode holds me and I beat against it, its excitement
leaking into me at the nearness of his blood and the dullness of his
Shell. Mode breaks at the instant he locates me; the street rotates
lazily away as the gun speaks. I feel the brief slap of kinetics
across one knee as my hands rise and flicker laughs out. His time
ends. Mine does not. Above, the other guard shouts and unleashes
forbidden hell across the street, dancing eager marbles that sing of
broken cohesion and doom. Mode takes me, then, pulling me back down
the block and into the manhole in a broken choreography of evasion
and maneuver as his rounds fail to connect. I feel them strike around
me and nudge their way into City.

As I lower myself into the depths of City and the approving
darkness, I feel the last bullet strike the back of my head. Flicker
stops it a tenth of a millimeter later, the kinetics transformed into
a splash of illumination around the darkness of the manhole. Broken
wiring and dripping fluids leap at me in the strobing reaction, then
there is only the thud of my fall and theplink as the spent
round drops beside me. Hissing at the loss of color, I slide across
the floor and into the tunnel that calls to me. The pain in my head
is comforting, urging me on into the underdark.